


It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Calls the Cops (Then It's Hide and Seek)

by tzigane



Category: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 13:18:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8802337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzigane/pseuds/tzigane
Summary: Things had never been right again after his mum died.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JuneLoveland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuneLoveland/gifts).



> You asked for world building; I got caught up in Danny's head instead. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

The thing was his dad, yeah?

After all, things had never been right again after his mum died. They'd lost the Village of the Year and she hadn't been able to take it, people said, his dad had said, but Danny had always sort of thought no one had it quite right. There were other things that were just as important. Sandford just did what it had always done with facts that were disliked. They glossed over the dirty bits, the unsavory truths, the particulars of any given story that might veer a wee bit way from their preferred world view.

That was Danny to a T, though -- someone who didn't fit into place like a neatly turned puzzle piece any more than his mum had done. Oh, he was a good enough boy, they'd say. Prone to flights of fancy. Too much like Irene, they'd say. Needed toughening up a bit.

So, his dad. That was where it came in, he reckoned. Much as his mum had her heart set on Sandford being village of the year, she'd have preferred Danny went to film school instead of the College of Police Training. He'd have preferred it, too, for that matter. It had been a thing with them, he supposed, films. They'd spent nights his dad was working curled up with a blanket watching different ones on a theme -- this night brothers-in-arms, the next deserted islands, giant sharks the one after that.

That was what he had left of her now, mostly. Instead of studying how to make films he had done as expected in their hamlet -- gone on to follow in his father's footsteps despite the fact that he wasn't at all well-suited for it. It was boring for him, so he acted up a bit, made himself a minor ignorable nuisance. He was bored, bored, bored, tired of the Andies and the twins and Doris, tired of Fisher's paranoia about other people wanting his job (because nobody wanted their jobs, all right? Who wanted to be puked on and pissed on and worse, and anyhow, it wasn't as if they ever even really arrested anyone, was it?). Honestly, Saxon and Walker were his favorites, mostly because he could ignore the muttering of the one and the sleepy snores of the other. Regardless of which one was sleeping or muttering at the time. Never mind the dreary ridiculousness of the calls he worked. He drank too much because it was that or do worse, and Danny just couldn't do that.

For a lot of reasons.

Mostly his dad.

He loved his dad, he did, but... always a _but_ , wasn't there? But. But his dad had infinite amounts of not being his mum that made it difficult for Danny to relate. But his dad had gotten an in-depth obsession with the whole village of the year thing that made his mum's look... well. Mild, he reckoned. Definitely discomfiting in any case, and so.

Yeah.

He was bored, and he spent a fair number of nights watching films and a good share of time in the pub. He spent money pretty equally between the local and Amazon, because honestly it was easier and cheaper than bothering to go down to the shops. He tried to hide it a bit, or at least pretend that he bought things there every now and again just to keep up appearances. If nothing else, Danny had been raised right and proper, and he knew all about appearances.

They had to be kept up. At all costs. Even if it all made him bloody miserable.

And then... things changed.

So, all right, his dad had gotten weirder and weirder over the years. He'd gotten in on some sort of club with most of the elders 'round their parts where they chanted a bit and then went on about having a word with folks who were displeasing most of them in general. Nothing weird about that, Danny had considered. Most old folks seemed to spend a fair amount of time complaining about all of the young ones. Besides, it had given his dad something to do that took his attention off of Danny beyond the necessity of buying ice cream for the office every time he went a bit overboard down to the pub.

If Danny had to pinpoint it, though, Sergeant Popwell was the start of things. He came down from London and stayed at the hotel for a bit, and then he just went right off his nut, didn't he? Started yowling about _murder_ and _grievous bodily harm_ and _corpses_ , and it was obvious that he just had violence on the brain. After all, they were all like that in cities, weren't they? That's what everyone said. All jumbled in on top of one another and so they did things like that. Violent things. Not the kinds of things that happened in boring places like Sandford, that much was certain. When they had to pack him off to the loony bin, that left a spot open at the department.

And things changed again.

Maybe he ought to have expected it, like. After all, it had started with Popwell. He'd gotten a glimpse of what people were like in a place that wasn't all about sweeping it under the rug, and it was a lot like some of his films. Things were interesting enough, and then they weren't anymore. He was bored again, so he went back to indulging a bit too much at the pub.

They'd said someone was coming to replace Popwell, and he'd sort of figured that it'd be the same sort of fellow -- older, walrus sort of mustache to go with his bushy beard, clearly unstable. It'd just be another go 'round like the other one, wouldn't it? So he got a wee bit too drunk and woke up in cell four with a splitting headache and a taste in his mouth vaguely reminiscent of something dead. Perhaps even dead for a week or more.

Ugh.

He got himself up and toddled off to the locker room, grabbing a shower and getting his uniform properly settled before he walked down to the shop for paracetamol and stopped by the bakery on his way back because his dad had declared chocolate cake a necessity by way of apology for misplacing his helmet. It wasn't even that badly out of place, really. It was just in communications, after all. The twins knew precisely where it was. He hadn't _lost_ it.

He'd just gotten back when he found a blond with a fantastic arse standing in the door to cell four, lingering in a way that said he was looking for something and declaring furiously, "He's gone!"

Danny remembered blinking and leaning in to ask, "Oh, my God. Who's gone?"

And that was how he met Sergeant Nicholas Angel.

That weren't half bad, then. Nothing at all like Sergeant Popwell. All right, so he didn't watch films or even telly, but that just meant Danny could entertain himself by asking steadily more ridiculous questions. It was fun, even the flat sort of answers he got at first; if nothing else, Nicholas was new and different. There was something to look forward to every day instead of the same old dreary in and out. Yeah, Nicholas was still all London paranoid, but he'd get over that eventually. After all, nothing exciting ever happened in Sandford. A lot of silly accidents, but never anything worth the mentioning, was it?

Except then it did. All sorts of things, and Sergeant Popwell hadn't been wrong at all, nor Nicholas. His dad's little chanty club was actually a _murder_ club as it turned out, and all of the town's dirty laundry tumbled out like a tightly stuffed closet spilling loose when someone opened the door. There was a dreadful sort of sense to it, the way things clicked into place, and all Danny could do was the same thing all of them were doing in the end: his best.

Afterwards, he'd always wonder at it, that moment when Mr. Weaver stepped out of the doorway. He'd seen it in films a million times, that moment -- everything slowed to a crawl and Danny had all the time in the world to make a decision. He could see all of the ways it might end, the choices he could make, and he knew that only one of them was certain, only one was right.

He flung himself in front of Nicholas, and time slid back into place.

Later, there wasn't much of it he remembered exactly, which was a shame. Everyone said as much, that it was right out of Hollywood or something. Nicholas had, by all accounts, lost his cool rather impressively, slamming Mr. Weaver in the head with the rubbish bin and knocking him back where he had promptly stumbled, fallen into the evidence locker, and managed to activate the sea mine they'd impounded from Mr. Webley's place.

The locker hadn't been strong enough to withstand the blast. Everyone had been a bit messed up, but most of them had managed to duck as best they could for protection, considering the state of things. They said Nicholas had flown right backwards from the force of the blast, and had come into the thick of the disaster looking for him even so.

That, Danny remembered, sort of. Remembered lying there, everything hurting, hearing his name. Remembered blinking and seeing blue blue blue where there should have been the blotch on the ceiling from that time that his dad had snuck up behind him and he'd yelped and tossed his entire dinner plate upwards where it had stuck with a messy splat before spilling all over the desk.

The recovery period had been a pain, but it had finally worked out. A lot of things had finally worked out, as it happened.

"You heading out?" Nicholas was a sweaty mess coming in from his run, but he still had a pretty fantastic arse. All of the running, Danny reckoned.

Leaning in, he bussed a quick kiss against Nicholas's lips and hitched up his duty belt. "Figure I'll go ahead on and have word with Mum. It always helps, days like today." He was pretty sure that his mother would have been eight kinds of pleased to see him as happy as he was. Happy as they both were, really. "Janice was supposed to come 'round with the flowers, but she said she hasn't got them properly done yet."

Nicholas pulled up the neck of his shirt, using it to wipe his face before huffing out a breath. "Go on, then. I'll stop by and pick them up on my way. See you there, yeah?"

There was no point in trying to hide the smile on his face. Not really. "Yeah."

Sandford wasn't the safest village in the country anymore. Not even close, in fact, but it was whole shedloads more real than it had used to seem. Danny was infinitely happier with it, happier with his life, happier with everything. And if all it had taken for that to happen was getting shot and blown up, well....

He'd always wanted to have that kind of film-ending happiness, and he was grateful he'd gotten it.


End file.
